Magic Box

Sitting alone on a Friday evening with nothing much to do, opened up a drawer filled with old books. Sitting between the ever present insurance books on one side and the medical journals on the other was an old dirty looking plastic medicine box. I pulled it out and dusted it. I knew what lay inside…my collection of stamps from my school days.

My affair with postage stamps began in early 1970s when we were all asked to make an album during summer vacation. With none of my relatives living abroad and those within the country being more habituated to sending the 15 paise post cards, the collection did seem very difficult. So, out I went from friend to friend and the best I could muster were stamps of the Father of the Nation with his toothless smile….was he smiling at my misery? Finally one day my father took me to Connaught Circus where you could find many vendors selling stamps. I forced him to buy me two packets of about 25 stamps each. Without wasting much time, I got some glue and stuck them on a ruled notebook, covered the same with brown paper and wrote boldly, My Stamp Album. It was much later  that I realized the folly of sticking permanently and it took me a lot of pains to remove the stamps from there and put them in the box. Slowly over the time, I kept an eye for stamps and my collection grew. All I did was to put every stamp into the little box which seem to have unlimited capacity.

As I opened the box today, there was a sense of pride and fulfilment. No sooner had the lid come off, than the stamps came alive…stamps of all colours, so many countries some which do not exist any more…Jugoslavia…Burma…East Pakistan. With tender hands I started taking the stamps out, glancing at them…President Kennedy…Mount Rushmore…here’s one which shows the marriage of Princess Anne  issued by Hong Kong. And you thought only Diana and Kate Middleton's marriages mattered?

How did Qatar get to host 2022 FIFA World Cup…whatever be the means that got them the position to be the host nation, their interest in the game goes a long way to 1972 Munich Games….half a century ago to be precise.

While the US and Russia (CCCP then) were fighting hard the race for space, surprisingly there were small insignificant countries which issued many a stamp like Oman, Mongolia, Czech Republic and Yemen of all nations…must have found it quite inspirational.

In the early 70s, Indian Cricket team won some famous victories in the Caribbean and England and a commemorative stamp was also issued. Three of the famous four I could guess..Sunil Gavaskar the batsman, Bishen Singh Bedi the left arm bowler with a patka and Farokh Engineer the dashing wicketkeeper…the right arm spinner next to Gavaskar is possibly Venkataraghavan for he seems too thin to be Erapalli Prasanna and doesn’t seem to be the Leggie Chandra.

Once all the stamps poured out and said hello to me, I found some scraps of paper, five in all. On opening each one of them with care for fear of tearing them, the folds unfolded another part of self…these were cricket scorecards we used to have when playing in the Triangular Park of Sector 8 R.K.Puram. The scorecards were where I scored plentiful runs and one of them even totalled a hundred…a Century!! I am sure the scoring would have made even the great Sir Viv proud…almost a four and a six a ball and one after another. This was possibly the only century I have ever scored in my life. I could vividly see Sir Shibu with a bat which inevitable had a sticker to say it was made from Kashmir Willow, no gloves, no pads forget the inner protective gears and helmets which even kindergarten kids wear to play with the tennis ball today. We used to play with cork balls and in winters getting hit on your fingers and legs with those fast moving deliveries hurt a lot. We surely would have won the match that day against the fiercely competitive neighbourhood team.  Wonder whether the Batting Great raised his bat to the thunderous applause of the hundred thousand in the stands….how I wish it were true.

“Hello…there is more in me!” cried a child's voice from within the Magic Box. What I saw was another part of me…there were eleven picture cards of Pakistani cricketers, some famous, some forgotten but surely a squad to beat. Why did i preserve the pictures of these players and not the Indian Eleven....maybe these guys were the victors that day. Take a look at the mighty all-conquering Pak XI …names have been put in order of their position in the picture. 

Row 1: Asif Iqbal, Sikandar Bakht, Wasim Raja, Muddasar Nazar

Row 2: Taslim Arif, Imran Khan, Jawed Miandad, Abdul Raqib

Row 3: Iqbal qasim, Sadiq Mohhmd (that’s the way it is spelt!), Talat Mirza

This one is meant to be for Wisden’s Almanac.

Finally what lay at the bottom was a picture of a Peacock. Why would I have this picture with me? With utmost curiosity I took out the picture and turned it around to see the name of Ashoka Hotel written. And when I opened the flap, it contained match sticks for the Richie-Rich of those times who would go to the grandest hotel of all in the country and flaunt their wealth. With a 555 between their lips they would light the cigarette and blow circles in the air. With one stick less, it was obvious someone had thrown the pack after using just one, to be picked by a collector on the road. Wonder if the restaurants like The Rotisserie serving Superb Continental Cusine or Samovar, the 24 Hour Coffee Shop still serve their generous customers as they did five decades ago?

It is now in the last few years that I have got back into the habit of visiting the Main Post Office on the Parliament Street at Delhi with a separate Philatelic Section and I have bought myself a proper stamp album where the latest stamps issued by Indian Posts are keep in proper condition. For the other less privileged but treasured postage stamps of old, they seem to have lived almost four and a half decades in the Yellow Magic Box and still seemed happy and lively there. So I put them back and closed my Magic Box of Memories but the stamps, pictures and stories kept haunting me at night.

Looking back I feel it was fun collecting stamps, picking up match boxes and empty cigarette packs just like rag pickers of today, running with a small branch to catch the colourful butterflies and walking barefoot in the dirty drains to catch the frogs, picking up pictures of cricketers but of course the best of those times was playing in the open fields…nothing made you happier. Got an apt forward from a friend today:

"Almari se miley huye bachpan ke khilone, meri aankhon ki udaasi dekhkar bole, “tumhe hi bahut shauk tha bada hone ka?”(Toys from childhood days tumbling out of the safe, seeing the sadness in my eyes asked, “Wasn’t it you who was dying to grow up quickly?” 

SS